Portal:Rock music

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The Rock Music Portal

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a ⁴
₄ time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.

From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)

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The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 3Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 6Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 7Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 8Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 9Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 10Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 11Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 12Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 13Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 14Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 15Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 16Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 17Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 18Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 19"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 20Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 21The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 22Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)

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Velvet Revolver was an American hard rock supergroup consisting of Guns N' Roses members Slash (lead guitar), Duff McKagan (bass, backing vocals) and Matt Sorum (drums, backing vocals), alongside Dave Kushner (rhythm guitar) formerly of punk band Wasted Youth, and Scott Weiland (lead vocalist) formerly of Stone Temple Pilots. The band formed in 2002 and was active until 2008, when Weiland left the band abruptly to rejoin Stone Temple Pilots.

In 2004, the band achieved commercial success with their debut album, Contraband. Despite positive reviews, some critics initially described Velvet Revolver as a mere combination of Stone Temple Pilots and Guns N' Roses, and criticized them for a "disconnection" between Weiland and the rest of the band. With their single "Slither", they won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. The band released Libertad in 2007, driven by the release of the single "She Builds Quick Machines", and embarked on a tour with Alice in Chains.

In April 2008, Weiland was fired from Velvet Revolver and reunited with Stone Temple Pilots. Velvet Revolver was put on indefinite hiatus and in November of that year, requested to be released by their record label RCA Records to allow themselves "complete freedom to go through whatever process it would take to accomplish" replacing Weiland.

Although Velvet Revolver worked on new material and auditioned new singers following Scott Weiland's departure, the band has not released any new material and only performed publicly once since 2008, when they reunited with Weiland for a one-off reunion show on January 12, 2012, at a benefit concert. This proved to be their last performance together before Weiland's death on December 3, 2015. Slash and McKagan rejoined Guns N' Roses in 2016. (Full article...)

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Neil Peart performing with Rush in 2004.

Neil Ellwood Peart (/pɪərt/ PEERT; September 12, 1952 – January 7, 2020) was a Canadian and American musician, known as the drummer and primary lyricist of the rock band Rush. He was known to fans by the nickname 'The Professor', derived from the Gilligan's Island character of the same name. His drumming was renowned for its technical proficiency and his live performances for their exacting nature and stamina. Peart earned numerous awards for his musical performances, including an induction into the Modern Drummer Readers Poll Hall of Fame in 1983 at the age of thirty, making him the youngest person ever so honoured.

Peart was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and grew up in Port Dalhousie (now part of St. Catharines). During adolescence, he floated between regional bands in pursuit of a career as a full-time drummer. After a discouraging stint in England, Peart returned home to concentrate on music where he joined Rush, a Toronto band, in mid-1974, six years after its formation. Together they released nineteen studio albums, with ten exceeding a million copies sold in the United States. Billboard lists the band third in "most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band".

Early in his career, Peart's performance style was deeply rooted in hard rock. He drew most of his inspiration from drummers such as Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and John Bonham, players who at the time were at the forefront of the British hard rock scene. As time passed, he began to emulate jazz and big band musicians Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. In 1994, Peart became a friend and pupil of jazz instructor Freddie Gruber. It was during this time that Peart revamped his playing style by incorporating jazz and swing components.

In addition to serving as Rush's primary lyricist, Peart published several memoirs about his travels. His lyrics for Rush addressed universal themes and diverse subjects including science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy, as well as secular, humanitarian, and libertarian themes. Peart wrote a total of seven nonfiction books focused on his travels and personal stories. He also coauthored with Kevin J. Anderson three steampunk fantasy novels based on Rush's final album, Clockwork Angels. The two also wrote a dark fantasy novella, Drumbeats, inspired by Peart's travels in Africa. (Full article...)

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Love It to Death is the third studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released on March 9, 1971. It was the band's first commercially successful album and the first album that consolidated the band's aggressive hard-rocking sound, instead of the psychedelic and experimental rock style of their first two albums. The album's best-known track, "I'm Eighteen", was released as a single to test the band's commercial viability before the album was recorded.

Formed in the mid-1960s, the band took the name Alice Cooper in 1968 and became known for its outrageous theatrical live shows. The loose, psychedelic freak rock of the first two albums failed to find an audience. The band moved to Detroit in 1970 where they were influenced by the aggressive hard rock scene. A young Bob Ezrin was enlisted as producer; he encouraged the band to tighten its songwriting over two months of rehearsing ten to twelve hours a day. The single "I'm Eighteen" achieved Top 40 success soon after, peaking at No. 21. This convinced Warner Bros. that Alice Cooper had the commercial potential to release an album. After its release in March 1971, Love It to Death reached No. 35 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and has since been certified platinum. The album's second single, "Caught in a Dream", charted at No. 94.

The original album cover featured the singer Cooper posed with his thumb protruding so it appeared to be his penis; Warner Bros. soon replaced it with a censored version. The Love It to Death tour featured an elaborate shock rock live show: during "Ballad of Dwight Fry"—about an inmate in an insane asylum—Cooper would be dragged offstage and return in a straitjacket, and the show climaxed with Cooper's mock execution in a prop electric chair during "Black Juju". Ezrin and the Coopers continued to work together for a string of hit albums until the band's breakup in 1974. The album has come to be seen as a foundational influence on hard rock, punk, and heavy metal; several tracks have become live Alice Cooper standards and are frequently covered by other bands. (Full article...)

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"Visions of Johanna" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Several critics have acclaimed "Visions of Johanna" as one of Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the language. Rolling Stone included "Visions of Johanna" on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 1999, Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, listed it as the greatest song lyric ever written.

Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of "Freeze Out", but was dissatisfied with the results. When the Blonde on Blonde recording sessions moved to Nashville in February 1966, Dylan attempted the composition again with different musicians, and decided to release this performance. All of the alternate versions of the song have been officially released, but some only on a limited edition collectors set: many of them are November 1965 or later 1966 studio outtakes, and two others are live performances from his 1966 world tour.

Numerous artists have recorded cover versions of the song, including the Grateful Dead, Cat Power, Marianne Faithfull, Chris Smither, and Robyn Hitchcock. (Full article...)

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Credit: Carlos Delgado CC-BY-SA

Amparo Llanos of Spanish band Dover in 2014 during their Dover came to me tour.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the Diaspora Yeshiva Band infused rock and bluegrass with Jewish lyrics, creating a music style it called "Hasidic rock" or "Country and Eastern"?
... that Shin Hae-chul, who previously made hard rock and heavy metal albums, was inspired by big band music when he made The Songs for the One?
... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?
... that Skálmöld & Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands documents a symphony orchestra playing heavy metal music?

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Chamber pop (also called baroque pop and sometimes conflated with orchestral pop or symphonic pop) is a music genre that combines rock music with the intricate use of strings, horns, piano, and vocal harmonies, and other components drawn from the orchestral and lounge pop of the 1960s, with an emphasis on melody and texture. (Full article...)